Oct 21 Setting Description

Sheridan Lockwood, Sasza to his family and friends, packed the orange and white backpack for a few hours at Rainham Lake Campgrounds’ lake beach. Inside, he placed the anthology his English professor gave him as a gift for his Math help with her daughter, his current journal, two pens, several cans of Dr. Pepper, and a beach towel. He slung it over his shoulder, along with the large beach blanket his mother insisted he take. He took a moment, looked around the campsite and when he was satisfied nothing was amiss, Sasza left and headed out.

He and his family had been coming to the New York state camping area for as long as he could remember. Every summer, his father Michael would take two weeks off from his job at Beverwyck Community Savings, pack up three tents and a pop-up trailer, his sisters and him, and along with his mother Marion, head the 40 minutes southwest into the Helderberg Mountains and find two adjacent sites. He would be in his own four-person tent: he was the only boy and the girls didn’t want to be bothered. Even though he was in his late teens, Sasza still wanted to camp.

“It recharges my batteries,” was the answer he gave when asked by his fellow Computer Science and Information students. It was one of the reasons he returned, but not the only.

He loved the area. The trees, groves of ashes, birch, and conifers, gave him a sense of history. When he wrote, the verdant areas calmed him: the wind rustling through the leaves soothed his technological mind. The aromas from the campfires and Coleman stoves sent his imagination to places only read about in fantasy novels.

Sasza took the short cut, through the shadows caused by old growth ashes. He walked behind several sites. He heard impatient children yelling for their parents to hurry before all the good beach spots would be taken or all the swings in the park would be filled. He smiled, remembering that he and his three sisters were once those kids.

The walk was quick, just five minutes. He shielded his eyes as he transitioned from shadow to summer sunlight. He waited to allow a couple of bikini-clad women to pass, adjusted his backpack, and followed. He stopped and removed his sneakers before hitting the sand. He allowed the hot sand to get in between his toes for a moment before he looked for a place to settle.

He smiled and moved quickly to an open space close to the women he followed in. If he didn’t write anything new for his new project, he had a good excuse.